Sonderbund War

The Sonderbund War (3-29 November 1847) was an uprising by seven Catholic cantons in eastern Switzerland against the confederate government. The cantons of Lucerne, Fribourg, Valais, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, and Zug seceded and formed a conservative alliance with 79,000 troops, while the liberal administrations of the other regions prepared an army of 99,000 troops under Henri Dufour to crush the uprising. In a campaign that lasted only a few weeks, Dufour's army crushed the uprising, killing 26 rebels with 60 dead on the government's side. Dufour cared for the 114 enemy wounded, setting the stage for his later foundation of the Red Cross, and Switzerland would become a federal state in the aftermath of the uprising, decentralizing the cantons.